Importing metadata from relational databases

When you import metadata from a relational database, you can import all the metadata or select particular object types, such as tables, columns, views, synonyms, stored procedures, and functions. You can also import system objects from a relational source. System stored procedures are not supported. IBM® Cognos® Framework Manager supports only user-defined stored procedures.

The following table shows the database objects that are mapped to Framework Manager objects.

Database object

Framework Manager object

table

query subject

column

query item

view

query subject

synonym

query subject

procedure

query subject

function

project function

All objects shown in the table above that are imported appear in the Project Viewer as metadata, except for functions. The functions appear in the Explorer tab in the middle pane, under the namespace that you imported the functions to. The functions also appear in the expression editor where you can use them to create expressions. You can import each function only once, unless you select the Import and create a unique name option to avoid duplicate name conflicts.

Named sets imported from Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Analysis Server are stored as read-only calculations in the Framework Manager model. The calculation has a flag that identifies it as a named set, and a property that contains the dimension name.

IBM Cognos Analytics (BI) does not support Oracle packages, which are essentially groups of procedures and functions. As a result, the synonyms for the Oracle packages do not appear in Framework Manager. Oracle stored procedures, functions, and synonyms are supported in Cognos Analytics and can be imported by using the Framework Manager Metadata Wizard as long as they do not reference an Oracle package.

Procedure

  1. Click the namespace, folder, or segment that you want to import into.
  2. Click Actions, Run Metadata Wizard.
  3. From the Select Metadata Source dialog box, choose the type of metadata that you want to import.

    The Data Sources option provides a list of data sources defined in the IBM Cognos software.

    • Select the specific relational metadata source to import.
    • Select a data source connection, and click Next.

      If the data source connection that you want is not listed, you must first create it.

    • Select the check boxes for the objects that you want to import.
    • Specify how the import should handle duplicate object names. Choose either to import and create a unique name, or not to import. If you choose to create a unique name, the imported object displays with a number. For example, you see QuerySubject and QuerySubject1 in your project.
    • If you want to import system objects, select the Show System Objects checkbox, and then select the system objects that you want to import.
    • Specify the criteria to use to create relationships.
    • If you want to convert all cardinalities to 1, clear the Fact detection enabled checkbox. Removing n cardinalities disables fact detection and the ability to automatically prevent double-counting. For more information, see Modeling 1-n Relationships as 1-1 Relationships.
  4. Click Import.

    Import statistics including a list of objects that could not be imported and a count of objects that were imported are shown.

  5. Click Finish.

What to do next

After importing metadata, you must check the imported metadata for the following areas: